Is Darwin Wreaking Havoc with Your Partner Ecosystems?

In nature, a healthy ecosystem provides a viable and sustainable environment for a rich diversity of living things, both flora and fauna. The same can be true in business, save, usually, for the leafy plants and humidity. Healthy business environments can sustain an abundance of different organizations and institutions, providing opportunity for a richer, healthier life for all.

If only things were that simple. Ecosystems can indeed provide an healthy environment for many. Many do so today. Think eBay.com, Craingslist.org and Myspace.com. These communities thrive by the strong desire of millions of Internet users, mostly consumers, to not only participate but also police and help administer these environments. The users of these sites not only purchase and sell goods and services, but they rate the value of their experiences, share insights and call-out harmful or unwelcome behavior. They are truly remarkable environments and are largely behind a new wave of euphoria behind many of the new "Internet 2.0" business models you no doubt have been hearing about. Piles of money are being heaped upon entrepreneurs in the social networking space or content sharing space. Picaboo.com and TravelPost.com are but two examples.

Building communities of peers in the business-to-business space, especially in IT, however, is proving harder. That’s despite the efforts of scores of vendors to establish ecosystems in which peer organizations can flourish by coordinating activities with one another to create businesses that deliver comprehensive solutions to customers in conjunction with complimentary partners in a mutually, beneficial fashion. That’s not to say that the efforts aren’t without merits. On the contrary, having a robust ecosystems of partners is a competitive advantage. Among other things, it can lead to:

• Increased sales coverage
• Tighter alignment with customers in vertical markets
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Enhanced customer satisfaction
• Better partner differentiation

• Do decide how much of a role you want to play in helping partners connect with one another. Some companies such as Microsoft want to play a significant role in helping partners find one another. Others prefer to keep hands off. Do you want to create something that merely lets partners find one another? Or do you want to take a more proactive role in linking them, monitoring how they perform n tandem from the beginning of a deal through its completion? The latter has customer service if not legal implications that you need to sort through. What happens when two partners who team up to collaborate wind up at odds with one another? Do you take sides? Do you weigh in at all? And what about the customer? Do you step in? Do you have an obligation? If you haven’t thought through these issues, then take a step back and ask if you have what it takes to venture into the partner ecosystem jungle.



• Don’t expect that your efforts to produce a level playing field. In nature, few things are ever level. Concentrate on creating solid ground for all, just not level. What we mean by that is that you should know who your best partners are—the ones that are the most loyal, the most capable, and the most customer-service oriented. Don’t you owe it to your best to make them stand out in some fashion on your partner portal? If you are helping to connect partners in various regions, you are going to want to make sure that your best of allies find their peers. Microsoft envisions a day when its partners will be able to read customer and fellow peer reviews on would–be allies the way that users of eBay can do today.



• Do factor in your field people. So many vendors today think a world class partner portal will enable them to cut back on capabilities in the field. Big mistake. Territory personnel can play a significant role in getting partners to use the portals that you build. Partners need to be shown multiple times the value of your portal and the value in kind they can find in other partners. But your utilization better be high already before you think about investing more in your portal. If partners aren’t using your portal today, better find out why before you sink millions in creating peer networks for them; that’s not likely to be the catalyst they need to up their utilization. Your problem could be navigation, concurrency, latency, etc. Get your people in the field to find out and fast.



• Don’t assume you know enough about your partners. The biggest mistake you can make when trying to foster a healthy ecosystem is assuming what partners are likely to thrive on when you create a partner portal for them. Will it be leads? Cross collaboration? Insights on navigating your programs? You may be surprised at what partners use your portal for. What you build in order for partners around the world to find one another may turn out the very vehicle they use to bitch most about your shortcomings. Do you really want to create something that enables them to zero in on all your weaknesses? Then again, maybe you want to be known as the vendor partner that puts it all out there and solicits feedback from every sector. Deciding where you play in your partner’s peer networks is important; so too is deciding how you play. Do you "police’ areas where partners spread false information? What do you do to correct information in partner profiles that you know to be incorrect or inflated?



• Do have partners amend their profiles. No mater how well you think you know your partners, chances are the profiles you have of them will no be enough to create a partner database of any use to those seeking to find would-be allies around the globe. Put yourself in the position of a partner seeking a peer halfway across the country. What do you want to know? Sure standing in a vendor’s partner program is helpful. But what about financial stability? Past customer satisfaction? Technical experience? To make your portal truly helpful for partners, you’re going to have to ask that your partners share their financial history, reference accounts, etc. And you’re going to have to help protect that information at every turn. Sound easy? It’s not.